Is it actually more litigious today? I get the vague sense that predatory lawyers have moved onto greener pastures, though I have no expertise with law or medicine.

Not direct greed, but doctors telling idiot patients "no, you can't have that: you don't need it" often lose those idiot patients. And the money that comes from it.

Why not? Seems to me that CEOs are basically celebrities. They don't directly generate anything that is worth what they are paid. It's their name that gets other people excited and gets the money flowing. Keeping it secret doesn't make a whole lot of sense if the only reason they're considering Elop is to make the stock price go up. "Elop!?! WOW!!! I KNOW THAT NAME, BUY BUY BUY!!! I hear he's already made more money for MS than the outgoing CEO did!!!"

I mean, it's not like he's good actually leading companies.

They don't keep it super secret which celebrity actors they've hired for movies for the same reason. They want buzz.

Wrong agriculture business. This is antibiotic resistance. Monsanto is arguably causing herbicide and pesticide resistance, although such claims are stupid: they made the herbicides and pesticides, and they worked. It wasn't going to last forever if it was used widely, and if it wasn't used widely to make cheap foodstock, what's the bloody point?

They even took steps to limit that much. The terminator seed technology was partly intended to prevent contamination: if the plants can't breed, they're less likely to mix with wild species and contaminate them. Obviously they had a lot of financial interest in it, both because if resistance gets into the pest populations, that's going to make their product worthless. And in response to the controversy and accusations that it would screw over farmers, Monsanto never actually put terminator seeds on the market.

Anyway, pointing fingers is only so helpful, even at the agricultural entities that ARE driving antibiotic resistance. At this point, we know the looming disaster. It's not rocket science or even climate science either. This is high school biology. Businesses can be expected to faithfully act without any regard other than immediate profit. Ignorant patients will always find greedy doctors willing to give them antibiotics they don't need for diseases that aren't bacterial. Fixing the problem won't happen voulontarily. We need legislation to prevent milk from cows treated with antibiotics from being sold in supermarkets cheaper than untreated milk. Same with other livestock. It's an externalized cost: there's an advantage to it that needs to be taken away. We also need to strip the medical licenses of doctors who give out antibiotics for the cold. Either they're shockingly ignorant of the last 20 years of research and aren't fit to be doctors, or they're intentionally contributing to a real health hazard and should face criminal charges.

And if you've ever watched to catch a predator, the guys they catch aren't exactly the James Bonds of pedophilia. One guy for instance brought a birthday cake saying "Happy 13th birthday."

Had to stop watching after that. Depressing on so many levels.

People will accept more abuse the lower the price. If I'm buying an overpriced italian car for like $300k, the dealership had better treat me like royalty, offer free oil changes etc. If I'm getting a decent german car for free, the dealership could have an overweight hairy man moon me and fart at me the whole time I'm there, tell me I'm fucking scum, and have a witch curse me to get warts or something. I'd still take it.

The Wii was always cheaper than the other consoles and broke less often than at least the 360 in most cases. I'm guessing that buying an original wii after launch and then the wii mini would still be cheaper than a single 360 for much of the 360's life. And that's assuming you only had to buy one.

(Disclaimer: I rarely used my wii, bought a second 360 after my first one broke, and only switched to PC gaming recently, so I'm a big idiot. Also if a dealership actually had an obese man fart at me, I'd probably get creeped out and leave.)

Read the article: they're looking for methane, which has not been done before and could indicate life on mars. Moreover, half the benefits of a space program seem to be developing it. They're developing aerospace capabilities which will translate into other fields. They're developing high expertise jobs to retain skilled engineers and scientists. Looking at the budget cuts, they're doing it at a great time too: while the US seems bound and determined to send all it's scientists away. Because low taxes or something.

Moreover, to those critics, realize that "it's in a different country" isn't a really good reason why we're exempt from such criticism as well. Just because there are poor people in a different country doesn't make it exclusively that country's moral obligation. The money and resources our country puts into military hardware it doesn't actually need could feed a lot of hungry mouths. So to anyone who would criticize India's priorities, go ahead and criticize the US's as well.

Well, shit, if we go with what our parents taught us, most government activities go right out the window. I mean "It takes TWO people to fight!" means we'd have to shut down most military spending, then we'd have to spend a lot more on welfare!

Not everyone thinks about international espionage for one, so that's why it's a shock to some people. And some of us are merely ACTING shocked, since acting like it was normal and okay only serves to keep big brother going.

Well, see, first you need to REALLY REALLY REALLY want the US to be "the good guy" in this situation and all situations. Then you'll see how they're the same.

If anyone is wondering, he's not making a joke about foiling transparent government. It stands for Freedom of Information Law

This wasn't an experiment, it was a stunt to highlight a problem he saw.

I'd say it's actually overly simplistic. It's a complex problem. A simple solution is doomed to only make things worse. "There are a lot of open access journals, and there are some shitty ones, so we should make there be less" is the basic suggestion here. The factors that motivated the journal numbers aren't going to go away just by consolidating them. Publishers of the shitty open access journals who are simply looking for a profit will still simply want a profit. Researchers who just want to churn out crap still have the same incentives to churn out crap.

This seal of approval or "virtual super journal" wouldn't end it either. We know this because such things already exist and yet the problem continues. You make this virtual journal to seperate the good from the bad. The people who made the bad journals will come up with their own. In addition to a large number of shitty journals mucking things up, you'll have a large number of shitty VSJs.

Why does competition = honesty not work now then?

For that matter, what's the problem? Shitty journal articles may be annoying, but researchers aren't exactly confused by them. "This article was published in the 'western romanian journal of blood borne pathogens in pigeons?' Hmm... better take it very seriously." A huge number of crap open access journals is only a problem for people who want to see research in extremely simplistic terms. People who just want to count publications and determine who to throw money at are the ones who see it as a problem. But such people are idiots and are going to waste money no matter how you try to prevent shitty publications. And researchers are going to be able to game such systems anyway.

Yes, I think that voters looking for a reason to continue to be apathetic will readily believe it. They might even assume that the government will go ahead and fix itself "even though Snowden brought this up the 'wrong' way." Feinstein and Rogers aren't making these statements because they fail to realize their hypocrisy. They're saying this shit because they're very cunning politicians who know how to play the press and defend their benefactors in the intelligence community. I think this WILL mollify a disturbing number of people. These congress people didn't bumble their way to the near top.

It's hard for me to blame the voters too. Most people don't have the time or mental energy to support themselves and their families AND maintain government against shit like this. I'd be happy if most voters stopped being paranoid about foreign threats. People are aware of the dangers of big government, their concerns are just eclipsed by fears of islamic cultists with pipe bombs. Cure that and I think it will be possible to trim back the NSA and military industrial complex. I think it will clear up before too long though: the paranoia seems to be driven by the 24 hour cable news culture, it's very effective at making people worried all the time. And I see the cable news watching population getting older and not being replaced by younger generations. It will be a lot harder to construct the same threats to justify the NSA to the public online, at least as it is now. With cable news, you get the soundbite, no cross-talk, and before you can question it, it's moved onto something else. You walk away with the idea that Snowden is a traitor and OH NO! TERRORISTS!!!

Cable news needs to hurry up and collapse, or we need real leaders to cure us of our paranoia. I'm prepared for a long wait.